Tuesday, January 14, 2014

It’s very true that a seaport's
location can play a significant role in how successful the port is and could
become. However, another very important factor in that success is the level of
quality infrastructure in and around the port.

The condition and status of
roads, bridges, rail yards, container terminals and shipping berths on or near
port property can play a huge role in the efficient movement of goods in and
out of an area.

This fact is quite well known by
the operators and overseers of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in
Southern California's San Pedro Bay. Throughout 2013, both ports were engaged
in multiple projects to upgrade and strengthen their respective substructures.
From berth upgrades, to terminal renovations, to improvements to bridges, roadways
and rail, the adjoining ports were in the midst of infrastructure improvements
throughout the year.

Punctuating the point that
infrastructure improvement means a lot to the two ports, the current fiscal
year for each is the first time in history that their capital budgets have
topped $1 billion combined.

Last June, the Port of Los
Angeles adopted a 2013-14 fiscal year budget of about $1.1 billion, with almost
$400 million – or 37 percent of the total budget – allotted for capital
improvement.

"Our fiscal year of July 1,
2013 to June 30, 2014 is the largest capital budget in our history, a $399
million capital budget that will break all our records in terms of total
capital spending," Port of Los Angeles Deputy Executive Director of
Development Mike Christensen told Pacific Maritime Magazine.

Days after the POLA approved its
budget, Long Beach also approved a $1 billion financial plan for its upcoming
fiscal year. The budget includes the largest capital improvement spending plan
ever adopted by the port: $788 million.

The capital spending total is
six percent more than FY 2013. The port's modernization projects, including its
Middle Harbor terminal project and replacement of the Gerald Desmond Bridge,
pushed the overall budget up by 6.6 percent compared to the previous fiscal
year.

One infrastructure project that
both ports worked on for years that finally reached its apex in 2013 was the
installation of alternative maritime power (AMP), also known as cold ironing,
at container berths throughout various terminals.

The AMP installations mean that
ships at berth are now able to receive electrical power from the shore while
the ships' engines are off. The berth electrifications came just before a state
deadline requiring certain California ports to ensure that at least half of all
visits by container cargo, refrigerated cargo and cruise vessels be powered by
electricity.

Under the rule, which went into
effect Jan. 1, 2014, vessels must sometimes shut down their diesel engines and
run on shore-side electricity while at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach,
Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco and Hueneme.

The rule, which applies to
fleets making at least 25 visits per year to California ports, was approved by
the California Air Resources Board in December 2007.

The port has a total of roughly
100 berths, but many aren't container or cruise berths and are therefore exempt
from the rule. That said, over the course of the past few years, the Port of LA
went from having nine AMPed berths to having 26 by the end of 2013.

"Those 26 berths will be
more than any other port in the world," port spokesman Phillip Sanfield
said.

"We will have spent more
than $180 million accomplishing this," Christensen said.

The Port of Long Beach also put
a significant amount of money into AMP power.

"We've recently finished up
about $175 million worth of infrastructure for the shore power regulation that
starts Jan. 1," revealed Dr. Noel Hacegaba, Acting Deputy Executive
Director for the Port of Long Beach.

By the end of 2013, all 13
international cargo terminals at the San Pedro Bay port complex had at least
one berth that can deliver shore power to ships.

Also among the more important
projects taking place on the LA side of the harbor throughout the year was
continued construction of the $137 million rail project at Berth 200, also
known as the West Basin Railyard.

The intermodal storage rail yard
is designed to provide staging and storage for trains using the 20-mile Alameda
Corridor railroad express line. When complete in the spring of 2014, it is
expected to improve a vital link in the national freight network.

The project will also enable
track space at the TraPac container terminal to serve as TraPac's future
on-dock rail facility. About $365 million in rail, roadway and terminal improvements
are being completed over the next few years at TraPac, which is currently the
only Los Angeles terminal without on-dock rail.

The project is being built in
two phases: Phase I, which began in 2012, includes construction of the new
yard, support tracks for the TraPac and China Shipping/West Basin Container
terminals, double-track connections to the Alameda Corridor and national rail
network and access road improvements.

Phase II, which began
construction later in 2013, includes final rail network connections and vehicle
overpasses to eliminate at-grade crossings for safer, more efficient flow of
truck and commuter traffic. Both phases are due to be completed by late spring
or summer 2014.

"It remains one of our most
important terminal expansion programs for several reasons," Christensen
said of the project. "TraPac is a $510 million expansion program that will
be the first automated container terminal at the Port of Los Angeles. We began
construction on the automated portions of the terminal back in 2012. The first
elements of automation continue under construction this year."

At an LA Harbor board meeting
last November, the commission formally approved the contracts for the largest
portion of the automated terminal to go into construction.

"It's what I'd call a
hybrid terminal," Christensen said of TraPac. "It's basically a three
berth terminal; two of those three berths will be fully automated. The third
berth will remain conventional."

Also part of the TraPac project
is a new rail yard.

"This will be the first
rail yard we'll open that will be an automated, on dock container rail
yard," Christensen said.

The ports' infrastructure
upgrades are being made in part to fend off competition from other areas aiming
to steal business from LA/Long Beach, such as the Panama Canal and Canada's
Port of Prince Rupert, both of which have undergone well publicized
infrastructure upgrades in order to attract more containerized cargo.

But the LA and Long Beach
upgrades are also being made so that the ports can better compete against a
closer competitor: each other. Although some outside the region look at LA-Long
Beach as one big sprawling complex, and although they do collaborate in some
instances, such as on anti-pollution initiatives, in actuality the two sides
are highly competitive with one another, something that keeps each striving to
gain a competitive advantage.

One area where the two entities
butted heads in 2013 was the development of the $500 million, 153-acre Southern
California International Gateway project. The SCIG is a planned near-dock rail
container transfer facility proposed by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway
for use on land owned by the City of Los Angeles Harbor Dept., as well as on
adjacent private land in Los Angeles, west Long Beach and Carson.

The project was approved by the
Harbor Commission in March and the LA City Council in May, but in June, the
City of Long Beach, the Natural Resources Defense Council, South Coast Air
Quality Management District and Long Beach Unified School District all
submitted anti-SCIG lawsuits in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that the
Port of Los Angeles didn't conduct a full and thorough environmental review
before approving the project.

Long Beach's suit contends that
the SCIG project would adversely affect its residents, businesses and schools
by bringing more noise and air pollution to an area that has already suffered
plenty over the years due to nearby port-related operations.

"The Port of Long Beach is
a department of the City of Long Beach, and so our position is consistent with
that of the city," Hacegaba told Pacific Maritime Magazine.

Due to the litigation,
construction, which was supposed to begin in 2013 and completed about three
years later, has been put on hold indefinitely.

"We're now we're slogging
through the additional portions of litigation," Christensen said. "It
remains a very important project to us and to the BNSF Railway, the project's
sponsor. It's awfully hard to estimate the time it'll be tied up in litigation.
That's about all we can say at this point."

The conflict is a rare example
of the two sides openly being in direct conflict with one another; usually
projects one side undertakes affect the other side more indirectly, such as the
building of a new bridge on the Port of Long Beach side to replace the aging
Gerald Desmond Bridge.

The $1 billion Desmond Bridge
project consists of replacement of the obsolete structure with a new
state-of-the-art span. A groundbreaking for construction of the new bridge took
place in January of 2013, and the new, as yet unnamed structure is expected to
be finished in 2016. The new bridge would be higher from the water and have
more traffic lanes than the existing 45-year-old Gerald Desmond Bridge, which
sits adjacent to the under construction span.

"It's important for the
public to know that we're investing billions of dollars into our infrastructure
at a time when the global competitive landscape is changing and it's important
to note that we're doing this to position our port to be the most competitive
in North America," Hacegaba said. "What we're trying to do is make
sure we're big-ship ready."

The existing bridge's height of
155 feet restricts newer, larger ships from reaching piers within the inner
channels, but the new bridge is expected to raise the clearance over the port's
inner harbor channel to 205 feet, giving it the tallest span height for a
cable-stayed bridge in the US.

"The new bridge will be an
icon in the Long Beach skyline," Hacegaba predicted.

"Not only is the new bridge
going to be taller to accommodate the larger vessels that will have to pass
underneath it, but it will also be wider, so it will certainly positively
affect the commuter traffic," he said. "So for the trucks and
commuters that drive over the bridge, we'll be able to accommodate the traffic
flow so that you don't get as much congestion."

Separate, but related to the
Desmond Bridge project is the replacement of the 65-year-old Commodore Schuyler
F. Heim Bridge, a vertical lift bridge that lies partially within both the Los
Angeles and Long Beach city limits, due north of the San Pedro Bay port
complex.

For the $351 million Heim Bridge
project, which began in 2011 and is expected to be complete in 2017, the
California Dept. of Transportation determined it would be more cost effective
to replace the structure than attempt to retrofit the bridge. Therefore, the
lift-span portion of the existing Heim Bridge is being replaced by a fixed-span
bridge structure, which means the new span that expands over the navigation channel
will permanently be attached to the support beams, as opposed to being able to
move and lift upward.

Caltrans says the new bridge,
which like its predecessor is expected to see heavy truck traffic, will provide
a permanent navigable channel that's 180 feet wide, with a vertical clearance
of 47 feet, as opposed to the current bridge's 38 feet.

Perhaps most importantly, with
the elimination of the lift, traffic over the six-lane span won't be delayed
due to passing ships.

One of the more interesting things
about all the upgrades and improvements that port facilities are undergoing is
that neither port had to implement a planned infrastructure fee to get the
funding for them.

A few months ago, both ports
repealed approved never-implemented cargo fees that would have been used to
help finance major rail, highway and bridge improvement projects.

The infrastructure cargo fee
(ICF), which would have varied from $6 to $18 per 20-foot equivalent container
unit, would have been assessed on all loaded containers entering and leaving
the port by truck or rail.

The fee was formally revoked by
the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners Sept. 19 and by the Long Beach
board two months later.

The fees had been expected to
begin in 2009 and raise $1.4 billion in order to secure matching state
transportation funds for the design and construction of 17 specific highway and
rail construction projects throughout the harbor district.

But when the economy began to
slide into a deep recession, both ports decided to put the customer first and
shelved their versions of the ICF while pursuing other federal, state and
regional grants to advance their projects.

Over time, the ports managed to
find other revenue sources to secure the majority of the funds needed to pay
for multiple capital projects now being built or due to begin construction in
early 2014.

Get PMM delivered to your door

Subscribe to our E-Newsletter

Twice weekly maritime news

ABOUT PMM ONLINE

PMM Online is a complement to our monthly print publicationPacific Maritime Magazine, providing the maritime industry with information on issues as they happen – from the Mexican border to the Bering Sea – and across the Pacific.

Search This Blog

EDITORIAL

Pacific Maritime Magazine California Contributing Editor Karen Robes Meeks spent several years covering the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California for the Long Beach Press-Telegram and our sister publication Fishermen’s News.